AHIMA’s Advocacy Summit
March 27-28, 2017
Washington D.C.
AHIMA’s Advocacy Summit brought inspiration and innovation to its CSA Leadership and Advocacy representatives, including PHIMA’s President Nathan McWilliams, Executive Director Linda McLinden, President-Elect Chris Parfitt, and Advocacy/Legislative Chair Alexandra Richards. This year’s focus was to inspire the HIM Professional to advocate for our profession and enforce why we deserve a seat at the table when it comes to legislation and policy that affects healthcare.
To help recognize the importance of the HIM Professional, special guest speakers included Deven McGraw: Deputy Director, Health Information Privacy, Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services with a presentation on modernizing HIPAA, Cora Han: Senior Attorney, Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, Federal Trade Commission with a presentation on how the FTC is seeking to address privacy and security challenges with non-HIPAA covered entities, and Whitney Bowman-Zatzkin: Managing Director, Flip the Clinic which is a an open experiment to transform the patient-clinician experience. This year’s keynote speaker was Aneesh Chopra: President, NavHealth who encouraged the HIM Professional to re-think how we address an individual’s right to access health information by getting our organizations to look at patient’s health data differently and re-imagining our workflows.
PHIMA took “the Hill” by storm, meeting with Pennsylvania’s Members of Congress to discuss the importance of the HIM Professional and reminding them of our presence in Pennsylvania as well as a special ask to have clarification on the ability for HHS to work with private-sector-led initiatives focused on developing a coordinated strategy to improve patient matching as a result of the passing of the 21st Century Cures Act, but is in conflict with wording in the 1999 Omnibus Appropriations Act. PHIMA representatives met with staff in Senator Bob Casey and Senator Pat Toomey’s office as well as meeting with staff in Charles Dent’s office (15th District-Berks, Dauphin, Lebanon, Lehigh and Northampton counties) and Scott Perry (4th district-York, Adams and Perry counties) and shared materials with Representative Dwight Evans (2nd District-Philadelphia) and Tim Murphy (18th District-Allegheny, Greene, Washington and Westmoreland counties).
Submitted by Alexandra Richards, MJ, RHIA
PHIMA Advocacy/Legislative Chair
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